


Assumptions (they make an ass out of you and me)

by cockedtail



Category: Avengers Academy (Video Game)
Genre: Tony's gauntlet is a prosthetic, also some Jan/Nat if you squint real hard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-18
Updated: 2016-05-18
Packaged: 2018-06-09 04:34:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6890365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cockedtail/pseuds/cockedtail
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve and Tony have some hidden feelings about each other that they have to sort out. But, really, they should be sorting out the misunderstandings about Tony's past first.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Assumptions (they make an ass out of you and me)

**Author's Note:**

> ey yo waddup. had to make an AvAc fic. there aren't enough out there. gotta share some love. thank you a TON to my lovely betas [mel (americaschavez)](http://archiveofourown.org/users/america_chavez/pseuds/america_chavez) and [maggie (billysbatson)](https://twitter.com/billysbatson) for being awesome. muamua kisses kisses.
> 
> I Love Arm

“Alright, Steve,” Tony says, bending down to touch his toes, then coming back up again. He stretched his arm across his chest, “Not sure why you wanna do this so badly,” then the other arm, “but I guess I’ll play along.”

“Tony, we talked about it at lunch,” Steve responded, looking at him with his arms crossed. Steve stood at the other side of the sparring mat, tall and strong, and looked ready to beat Tony in sparring, but Tony wasn’t about to say that aloud. Tony wished that he could just join Jan on the other side of the gym to do his regular workout, maybe run on the treadmill while she did jump rope. “One day you might be caught outside of the suit, and you’ll be vulnerable if you can’t fight hand-to-hand. So, I want to help you with that.”

Tony scoffed and waved his hand lazily at Steve. “As _if_ I’ll be caught outside the suit. It’s a part of me, Steve, and I’d like to see a guy try to beat me out of it. That’ll be the day,” he ended with a chuckle.

Steve rolled his eyes. “Then just use this as a reason to do some exercise other than running on a treadmill or practicing your repulsors.”

Tony’s mouth fell open. “Hey! That’s not _all_ I do, you know. I also do tons of heavy lifting.”

Steve’s mouth twitched upwards. “Oh really? Where?”

“In my lab!” Tony answered quickly. “And remember that time when we had to fight A-Bomb and Red Hulk? Yeah, I lifted pretty heavily there, too. Oh! And when we had to fight Ronan, I was doing a ton of training.”

“Okay, the entire mess with Ronan and the hulks, I’ll give you that,” Steve said. “But still, it’s important to know how to fight if you’re put in a tight spot.”

Tony shrugged. “Well, whatever you say.” Tony stood ready, posing in a lazy fighting stance. “Ready to go then you are, _mon capitan_.”

“Before we start,” Steve says, “you have to take off the gauntlet.”

Tony tilted his head to the side. “My what?”

Steve pointed at Tony’s right arm. “The gauntlet, Tony. You can’t spar with that on; it’s part of the suit. The point of this is to learn how to fight without the armor.”

Tony opened his mouth to respond, but then closed it again. _This is awkward_ , he thought unhappily. On the other side of the room, Jan and Natasha had stopped training together in favor of observing the exchange, and by the look of Jan’s face, she seemed offended _for_ Tony.

“Cap,” she started out, cheeks puffed out, eyes narrowed, the tiniest bit of red on her cheeks. “You can’t just _say_ things like that. That’s so—“

“Jan! Jan, it’s okay,” Tony interrupted her.

Steve looked taken aback, completely confused. “Uh, what’s going on?”

“But, Tony,” she said with a small frown, completely ignoring Steve’s question. “That was totally rude. He can’t just—“

He held up his hand and gave her a kind smile. “It’s okay. He didn’t know.”

Natasha put her hand on Jan’s shoulder. “He’s right, Janet.”

Steve crossed his arms and frowned, obviously not pleased with being ignored. “Can someone _please_ tell me what I did?”

Jan looked so eager to answer, but she knew full well that it was Tony’s right to explain. Natasha just looked at Tony expectantly. Tony looked at Steve and rubbed the back of his neck. God, he _hated_ talking about this. “Uh, I can’t actually take it off.”

Now poor Steve just looked downright confused. “Is it stuck?”

“No, nothing like that. I mean, I _can_ take it off, but I don’t unless I have to sleep. It’s my, uh, I mean, it’s like a—“ God, what the _hell_? It’s never been this hard before. He usually just brushes it off with an empty smirk, but it’s always so hard talking to Steve. Tony pinched the bridge of his nose and groaned. “It’s my arm, Steve. A prosthetic.”

For a few moments, the room stood in silence. Steve’s eyes widened slowly and his cheeks turned red. “Oh, my God. I’m so sorry, Tony,” he said, incredibly flustered. “I didn’t mean to offend you. That was completely out of line and—“

“Whoa, whoa, Cap! It’s alright,” Tony assured him. “It’s not terrible. You didn’t know. No harm was intended, so no one got hurt, as they say.” Then Tony frowned. “No, wait, I think it’s ‘no harm, no foul’…”

“I’m _really_ sorry, Tony, I really am.” Steve sighed and paused. “I…I mean, it’s so high tech and I just assumed it was only part of the armor, not—“

“A part of me?” Tony finished for him. Steve nervously shoved his hands into the pockets of his sweatpants, and Tony had to resist grinning. “Most people assume, so you’re far from being the first.” He raised his arm, posing as he would to fire a repulsor shot, but didn’t charge it. “I had a different one at first, but it didn’t really fit my style, if you catch my drift. I prefer a bit of a _personal_ touch, some of my own special flare.”

Steve’s raised an eyebrow. “Wait, did you _make_ that on your own?”

“Yeah,” Tony said almost absently, “I did. Who else was going to make _this_ thing of beauty for me?”

“He’s a _genius_ , Steve,” Jan chimed in, a tone of ‘duh, dummy’. “He’s the only one who could do something as cool as that.”

“Don’t compliment him too much, Janet,” Natasha said beside her. “Might boost his ego up into space.”

Jan rolled her eyes. “Boosting Tony’s ego at this point means _nothing_ now that we have Wonder Man on campus. Have you heard that guy? He literally said that this campus is only cool now because _he’s_ on it. Did you know he takes more selfies than I do?”

Natasha nodded. “Yes, I’ve talked to Simon. He’s…”

“Annoying?”

“I was going to say ‘overwhelming’, but ‘annoying’ fits even better.” Natasha spared a glance at Steve and Tony before dragging Jan to the other side of the gym. “Back to training.”

Tony heard Jan’s loud suffering groan and smiled. He turned his attention to Steve again, who was still looking at his arm intently. Tony felt slightly uncomfortable now. He had never felt _embarrassed_ about his arm before, but with Steve staring at it so seriously, it felt almost like Steve was _judging_ it (or maybe was too self conscious around Steve). Tony knew rationally that Steve wouldn’t judge him for this, especially since his long lost thought-to-be-dead emo former assassin best friend also had a metal arm, and Barnes’ went all the way up to his shoulder. He wondered how Barnes had not mentioned anything to Steve about Tony’s arm, considering that they had more or less bonded over it (getting along with Bummed Out Barnes is a work in progress). Maybe he thought that Tony should just tell Steve himself, to which he was more or grateful for.

Clearing his throat, Tony said, “So, uh, any questions?”

Steve had started to shake his head, and then stopped, biting his lip. He looked like he was trying to build up some sort of sudden courage. “Tony, I just wanted to say that I think it’s _amazing._ I can’t believe you made it yourself.” He quickly added, “I mean, I _can_ ,  because I know you’re a genius, but to see it like this? It’s kind of mind blowing and—“ Steve stopped himself and frowned. “Sorry, I have no idea what I’m saying.”

Tony shook his head, still completely stuck on Steve saying “amazing”. His cheeks felt hot and he felt small flutters in his belly. “R-really? You think it’s amazing?” Oh great. He sounded like a small nervous freshman in high school talking to the crush they’ve been staring at from across the class for the first time.

“Of course,” he answered. “It’s incredible.” He sounded so _genuine_ . Tony felt like someone reached into his heart and pulled on his heart strings ( _Vision could probably do that_ , Tony thought, resisting to shudder at the disturbing thought).

“So,” Tony says, “you don’t think it’s, like, bad?”

“What? Absolutely not! I think it’s fantastic, Tony.” He smiled widely. “I don’t think I could think it’s bad, anyways. I love every part of you.”

Tony froze, thinking that he had just lost his mind, because there was no way in _any_ universe that Steve would ever say that to him, but Steve’s eyes were going wide, face red, and Tony realized that _oh God Steve had just said he loved every part of Tony_. The silence in the gym was almost deafening, and Tony was so tempted to yell just to fill the empty space, but he couldn’t get anything out except for a small and flat, “What.”

Steve swallowed thickly. “What.”

On the other side of the room, Jan let out a squeal of excitement, the rest of the sound being muffled, most likely by Natasha slapping her hand over Jan’s mouth. Tony couldn’t even register anything going on outside of _Steve_ right now because, well, _holy shit_. “Did you just—“

“Oh, gosh, I didn’t realize the time,” Steve said a little too loudly. “It’s that time, and it’s late.”

“Wait, what? What time is it?”

“I have a thing,” Steve quickly said, starting to walk backwards and away from Tony. “I have a prior engagement and I really should be getting to that right now. We can, uh, try this again later? We can try the lesson later. Yes, lesson later.” And Steve left the gym without another word, leaving a baffled Tony standing alone on the sparring mat, barefoot and incredibly confused.

On the other side of the gym, Tony heard a whistle. “ _Wow_ ,” Jan said. “That was _terrible_ . Like, I didn’t think anyone could be worse than Peter flirting with that theatre girl Mary Jane, but that was _so bad_.”

Natasha made a noise in agreement. “That was painful to watch.”

“It really was!” Jan groaned. She came over to Tony and threw an arm over his shoulder, but he hardly even felt it. He was too busy looking at the door Steve just walked out of, leaving him alone and _really_ confused. “It was like watching a car crash in really, really slow motion.”

“It was like watching a man drown and someone helping him,” Natasha said, “but then they both fell in and drowned.”

“Yikes, pretty dark there, Nat.”

* * *

 

“And you just _walked out_ ,” Bucky said flatly, like it was the most ridiculous thing Steve had ever done in his life, which it most likely was.

“Nah, man,” Sam said, taking another long drink from his soda, and then swallowing to add, “It was more like _ran out_. It was like his pants were on fire.” Bucky barked out a laugh, slapping Steve’s knee, and Steve wasn’t feeling any better about any of this.

Steve frowned deeply. “How do you even know?”

Sam grinned. “I was flying around when it happened. When I saw you speeding outta the gym, I seriously thought there was an emergency, like Hydra was attacking again, or something, but nah. You were just _literally_ running from your feelings.”

“You guys aren’t making me feel any better, you know.” Steve sighed and buried his face in his hands. Sharon made a small noise of “oh, Steve” and rubbed his back comfortingly. He was glad that it was just the four of them alone on the stadium bleachers; he didn’t know what he would do if anyone else saw him like this. He more or less wished that Natasha were here too, but must’ve been too busy with Jan. “I have no idea why I said any of that to him. It just…came out.”

“You basically just told him you love him, pal,” Bucky said.

“I know!” Steve almost shouted. “I wasn’t thinking.”

“At least you weren’t lying,” Sam added. “We all know it’s true.”

Sharon nodded. “My job is to observe you, and I know you _definitely_ love the guy, Steve.” Smiling kindly, she added, “Listen, handsome, you are really honest, so it could’ve just been reflex.”

“Like a knee jerk?” Bucky grinned. “Stark shows off his brain and Steve just says he loves him?”

“You love his brain,” Sam teased. “His _brain_.”

“I’m sure he loves other things about him, too,” Sharon said, her smile turning teasing, and Steve regretted bringing the three of them here with him. “You _did_ say you liked _every_ part of him.” They all began to laugh, all except for Steve.

Steve groaned. “Hilarious.”

“Oh, Steve, we’re just teasing you,” Sharon said. “It’s not that bad, you know. Just talk to him and tell him how you feel.”

“Pretty sure he already did that,” Bucky laughed.

“Catastrophically,” Sam added unhelpfully.

“I _mean_ ,” Sharon went on, “explain everything to him properly. You know, without word vomiting, because that will not help you again.”

Steve sighed. “I’m not good with emotions. I don’t know how to…share.”

“No shit, buddy.”

Steve punched Bucky in the arm. “Shut up, Bucky.” Bucky punched him back, and normally Steve would just continue punching him, but he couldn’t find the energy now, to which Bucky looked displeased by. “What should I say?”

Sharon shrugged. “Ask him out to lunch, or something. There’s a good burger place off campus, just two blocks down.” She patted him on the shoulder. “You’ll figure it out, handsome.”

He gave her a small smile. “Thanks, Sharon.”

Sam scoffed. “And what are we? Last week’s leftovers?”

“Neither of you helped me at all.”

* * *

 

Tony sat on one of the seats outside of the dormitories, and he _was_ tinkering with some tech, but then his arm started making weird whirring noises and sparked. So now, he was stuck fixing that, which he didn’t mind all that much anymore. After dealing with his prosthetic for so long, he basically became ambidextrous. From out of the corner of his eye, he saw someone approaching, and he wasn’t planning on saying hi.

“What’re you doing?” Oh, it was Steve. “Looks bad.”

Tony shrugged, fixing some wires that were strangely and slightly twisted. _How did_ that _happen_? “Nothing bad. Just stopping it from exploding.”

“Exploding?” Steve sounded worried.

Tony bit back a laugh. “I’m joking, Cap. It’s just a small fix, no worries, I promise. I can turn the off the nervous system whenever I need to, so I don’t actually feel when I’m fixing it.” He looked up at Steve, who was looking at his arm curiously. “So, did you wanna ask something?”

“Huh?”

Tony glanced down at his arm, then back up at Steve. “Looks like you wanna ask how it happened, but you’re too polite of a guy to ask.”

“I don’t want to pry—“

Tony waved it off lazily. “Trust me, it’s not bad that you wanna know. I can tell you, no problem. You wanna know?”

Steve took a few moments to think it over, but then nodded hesitantly. “If you don’t mind.” Steve stood there for another silent moment before adding, “I’ve read some SHIELD reports on you when I woke up, but it doesn’t cover what I want to know.”

“What is it that you want to know?”

“Why are you Iron Man?” Steve asked, genuinely confused, and then looked shocked with himself. “Sorry, I don’t mean that in a rude way. I just want to know what made you want to come here and do all this,” he said, vaguely gesturing around them.

Tony smiled. “I can tell you that, too, you know.”

“You really don’t mind?”

Tony shook his head. “Not at all, Steve.” Tony patted the seat next to his own. “You might wanna sit down for this. It’s kind of a long story.” When Steve sat, Tony went back to fixing his gauntlet, talking at the same time. “It happened a few years ago. I was in my workshop at home working on the first version of my arm. The design I was trying to do wasn’t efficient, it was really flawed, and at the time I didn’t realize it, but I had miscalculated _terribly_ , and as I was working on it, it just…there was an explosion. There was a bad reaction somewhere, a wire, some chemicals I was using, I’m not sure. It doesn’t really matter what it was, because the main mistake was in the arithmetic, but all of that is basically irrelevant, considering that the explosion blew my arm off and blasted shrapnel into my chest.

“The force of the explosion threw me to the wall; gave me a few broken bones, plus a concussion.” He let out a self-deprecating laugh. “My mom and Jarvis were home, and as soon as they heard something blow up, they came running down to my small workshop and called 911. I don’t really remember much after that. I passed out from blood loss and, well, everything else that was going on. They tried to do surgery on me, get out all the shrapnel, but they couldn’t, but this really amazing surgeon named Doctor Yinsen was able to install this thing—“ he tapped on the arc reactor “—and he saved my life. At first, it was just a magnet to keep the shrapnel from getting to my heart. Yinsen, he was from Afghanistan. He told me that some of the people in his village suffered from the same thing, but from bombing shrapnel, and they would call them the ‘walking dead’. Told me it was because it takes about a week for the shrapnel to reach the vital organs, then you die.

“That didn’t sound too great to me, so I was pretty grateful that he gave me this thing, even though it’s…also annoying sometimes, but not as much as it used to be. When I was released from the hospital, which took some time, by the way, I was given a prosthetic.” He finished fixing the wires and closed the gauntlet, not letting anything be exposed anymore. He tested it; flexing his fingers, moving his hand in circular motions, then charging the repulsor, but not firing. “Like I told you before, it wasn’t as high tech as I would’ve liked, so I modified it myself. Honestly, I seriously hated it at first. I had phantom pain all the time, and still do now sometimes, but not _nearly_ as much as I used to. It was hard, but it got better. When I upgraded my arm, I got working on this magnet in my chest, and made it into an arc reactor. Then I managed to upgrade it _again_ with a vibranium alloy instead of palladium, because palladium is poisonous, as it so happens. I mean, it was really ironic; the thing that was keeping me alive was also killing me slowly.”

“So,” Steve interjected, “what happened? Did you become Iron Man?”

“Well, okay, that’s kind of where the story gets a bit complicated, actually.” He put away his tools back in their box and closed it, then officially gave Steve his full attention. “I managed to make a suit, then I started being a hero, doing the good work and whatever, and then my parents and Jarvis died in a car crash, so my life came to a full-stop, and I stopped being Iron Man. At the time, I didn’t really have anyone else except for Rhodey and Obie—Obadiah Stane, but even then, Rhodey had just gotten into ROTC and Obie was running the company.” And _wow_ , Steve looked really damn sad now. Tony cleared his throat and continued, “But things got better, but in a weird way, and I’m not so sure if this would be counted as a ‘good’ thing by the general public, but, hey, it happened and here I am.”

“What happened?” Steve looked incredibly into the story, and Tony didn’t really know how to feel about that.

“Just to make the story short, I found out that Obie was dealing weapons under the table to terrorists, and that was officially _not awesome_ ,” Tony explained. “He was also dealing with Hydra, who, by the way, orchestrated the car crash that killed my parents and Jarvis just so he could get control of the company.” Steve’s eyebrows shot up in surprise and disgust. “Here’s the kicker though; he tried to steal my armor designs so he could use that tech to sell. You know, make a profit on some teched up soldiers. I’m sure it would’ve worked well with the military if he had actually succeeded, but he didn’t and I won and, well, Iron Man was officially born, I guess.”

Tony shrugged. “But even then I wasn’t really Iron Man. I couldn’t actually keep up with it after all the shit with Obie went down because there was so much cleanup to do at SI and I also had to deal with Fury breathing down my neck about the Iron Man armor. I inherited the company, as I was next in line after Obie, which is, you know, great to have, but not when you’ve only just turned eighteen. That's also how I met Pepper, by the way. If it wasn't for her, I would've crashed and burned a long time ago.”

“Wait, hold on,” Steve said. “Really?”

“Yeah, eighteen,” Tony said, nodding. “I turn nineteen in, like, two weeks, by the way, Rogers, so you better be planning on giving me the greatest present ever.”

“I didn’t know it was going to be your birthday,” Steve said, sounding panicked. “What do I even get you?”

Tony let out a small laugh. “It’s okay, Steve, I’m just joking. You don’t even have to get me anything.”

“I’m still going to get you something, Tony,” Steve said with a smile. “Sorry, I interrupted. You can continue.”

“You’re really into this story, aren’t you,” Tony chuckled. Steve looked flustered for a moment, but Tony went on before Steve could say anything. “So, anyways, I was busy with that for about a month or so, thinking, ‘well I guess this is gonna be the rest of my life; sitting behind a desk signing papers and making building tech to sell, which I guess isn’t too bad, right?’ and it’s obvious that I wasn’t really too pumped about it. Then, these kids were in the middle of a huge conflict going on with The Wrecking Crew, and I couldn’t stand by and let them _die_ , so I helped them. Then, Fury called me.” Tony rubbed the back of his neck and let out a huff of a laugh. “And I guess that’s it, really.”

There was silence between them, neither of them saying anything. Steve had looked away for a moment, as if to take in the story, and for a very self-conscious moment, Tony was thinking _he must think that my story isn’t as cool as his. I’m not that great, really_. But he quickly shut that down.

Steve opened his mouth, and Tony was so sure he was going to say something ridiculous like _wow cool Tony bye see you later_ , but he didn’t. He said, and this was fucking Tony up, “That is one of the most incredible things I’ve ever heard, and I’m almost a hundred years old.”

Tony felt his face go red, the heat going up to the tips of his ears. “Technically, you’ve only really been conscious for, like, nineteen of those years, so that doesn’t count.”

“Tony, you’re _amazing_ ,” Steve said in awe, completely ignoring Tony’s sarcastic comment that was meant to _divert the conversation somewhere else oh my God what was Tony going to say to_ that? Steve reached over to hold Tony’s hand (his prosthetic hand _oh my God Steve_ ) in his own. “I don’t think I can tell you how amazed I am right now—“

“Well, I mean, you just said it twice.”

Steve rolled his eyes, but he was smiling. “Shut up, Tony, just take the compliment.” Steve paused again, as if he were trying to find the words, and his cheeks were turning pink, and Tony was just telling himself that it was because Steve is really white, and the sun just naturally does that to him. Yeah, that’s it, that’s why. “Tony,” he started, and wow he sounded weirdly serious all of the sudden, “you know what I said earlier, I meant it.”

Tony took in a sharp breath. “You mean, uh, the thing you said in, um, the, uh, gym?” _Very articulate, Tony._ “The part where you said I have to train more? Yeah, I remember.”

Steve shook his head. He glanced around, like he was trying to avoid eye contact with Tony in every way possible by looking everywhere else but at him. He settled back on Tony again, looking slightly more determined. “When I said I loved every part of you, I meant it, and now I mean it even more now that I know, well, more about you.”

“Oh,” Tony breathed out, and that’s all that was able to come out of his mouth, apparently.

“And I’d like to know more,” Steve said. “About you, I mean. I’d like to know more about you. If that’s alright with you, I’d like to know more. Maybe, uh, we can, I don’t know, have lunch, or something? I’m—“ Steve groaned and closed his eyes for a moment, before opening them again, looking slightly embarrassed. “I’m not good at this.”

Tony swallowed thickly. “Good at this? Good at what?”

Steve took in a deep breath. “Would you like to get lunch with me? I don’t mean like a normal lunch like we usually have, but a date. A lunch date.”

“Are you asking me to go on a lunch date with you?”

“Yes, I’m asking you to go on a lunch date with me.”

Tony’s heart fluttered, and this giant smile was plastered on his face and he couldn’t get it off even if he tried, and he didn’t want to try. “Why, Steve Rogers, I’d love to go on a lunch date with you.” He was so happy right now, he could hardly even believe it. He couldn’t believe that Steve felt the same way about him, and, okay, maybe he really should’ve believed Steve the first time that morning when he basically said he loved Tony, but that’s beside the point. The point here is that Tony is now going on a date with _Steve fucking Rogers_ and he’s too happy to think. Way too happy to think. Which is why Tony has to ruin it, of course, by kissing Steve right then and there.

He doesn’t even know _why_ he does it (okay, yes, he knows; Steve is just so handsome and irresistible and how could he not want to kiss him?), but it’s happening. Tony had just reached over to tug him slightly by the collar, then he leaned over to kiss him, and his lips were a little dry, slightly parted, and Tony _loved it_. Tony had only realized what he was doing about three seconds into the kiss, and he was about to pull back, until Steve had lifted a hand to gently cup his face and kiss him back.

Fuck every single other first kiss that Tony has ever had; _this_ one was the only one that counted.

Tony pulled back and looked at Steve. _Wow_ , he thought dizzily, _his eyes are really fucking blue. That’s too beautiful. That has to be illegal_. He let out a shaky breath and a small laugh. “So, um, lunch?”

Steve let out a surprised laugh and nodded. His eyes glimmered with joy, and Tony was dazed that he was the one who put it there. “Yeah, lunch.”

Tony grinned. “Great, because I know this awesome burger place that’s, like, two blocks off campus. They have the best fries."


End file.
